The Process of Calcination

The fire burns everything to ash.

Welcome back, dear reader, I hope the last week has found you well. As we discussed last week, we will be covering the first operation of alchemy, calcination. This is a part of the black phase of alchemy and is a difficult phase that breaks everything down to it’s most basic parts. This phase is when the alchemist releases the salt confined within the material by removing all the extra pieces that cover up it’s true form. I hope we can take this week to try to burn off some of the mystery surrounding the process of calcination and reveal the important and useful pieces for each of us.

Let’s begin with an explanation of what calcination means, the word means the process of disintegrating a substance with the use of heat, but without melting, to expel volatile matter. To put that simply it is to burn something to ashes without melting it. This is very simple to visualize with herbs since they burn easily but as I learned when I first tried my hand at metal smithing, steel can burn very easily without melting as well. The process of burning the material with a high heat removes the volatile elements (those things that can be burned by fire) from what is fixed, or to say it in alchemical terms, removing all of the elements of water and air from the earth via fire.

The most basic form of calcination used in laboratory alchemy is when the material being worked with is heated up, preferably without the presence of oxygen, until it is a pure white(or sometimes red) ash. For those practicing alchemy in their kitchen, this can easily be done by placing the material in a fire/heat proof dish and blasting it directly with a butane torch. The high heat is sufficient to burn most herbs and materials that “kitchen alchemists” work with to a white ash and the butane is a heavy gas so it helps push oxygen away from the material to minimize oxidation. When done this way, the material should be stirred on a regular basis to ensure all of the material is calcined. This can also be done by spreading out herbs on a baking sheet and placing it in the oven, but this way is much slower and can sometimes cause a lot of oxidation to build up as well as can produce a lot of smoke, so ventilation should be taken into consideration[1][3]. The white ash that is produced from calcination is the Salt of the material that we have discussed previously and is composed of the physical building blocks of that specific material.

When we look at transcendental, mental, or psychological alchemy the intense heat of calcination becomes easy to see when the work is laid out for us. The work of mental alchemy is to take the impure aspects of our personality and evolve them toward a perfect expression of the cosmic, so the material is the imperfect personality trait coated in the ego to be burnt off, the lab is the mind of them alchemist, the heat of calcination then is the fire we are all purified through. Let us take a look at it another way; maybe you known you have a problem with patience and want to begin working on that trait, you may have an easy time at first because the volatile parts of your ego are no match for your new dedication to patience. As you notice that no more problems with patience seem to be bubbling up, the heat will naturally turn up, maybe it is your partner or child, maybe it is your boss, maybe it is the other drivers on the road, something will cause more and more of the false personality of the ego to burn off until you have a clear picture of the reasons why you struggle with patience. At that point, you can address the reasons for your problems with patience without the ego blocking your view.

As many of us know, this is not a fun process to go through. The burning off of the ego is also often referred to as ego death and is almost always described in a very painful way. When ego death is spoken about in regards to the use of entheogenic compounds many people talk describe crying for prolonged periods of time, seeing visions of a part of them or their personality actually dying, and feeling the pain or sadness associated. The main difference between this and the slow work of mental alchemy is the time frame and therefore the temperature of the fire used, the danger associated with it, and the propensity for mistakes. To equate this to a warning given by the Former president of the International Alchemy guild, the dangers associated with the dry work of alchemy should limit the use of it to those who are highly educated in the dry work and aware of the risks it involves[5].

When we are going through this long repeated process of calcination we may want to turn down the heat in order to give ourselves a rest, but the heat cannot be turned off or you will risk the work failing and having to restart. Recognize that the parts of you being burnt off are not the real you nor are they important, and the material being left behind, while probably not recognizable to what you started with, is the real you and has been purified by that trial you have gone through. When the gold of your soul is heated in the fire, only the dross is burnt off and removed, always leaving behind a more perfect result.

This process is difficult and painful but necessary. The work should not be taken up lightly because it is hard to do and every true alchemist will agree there is nothing easy about this great work, but the hard parts are only that, parts. The great work is not all pain and suffering or we would be aesthetics and not alchemists, but the reward of a perfected soul is not something that can be given away easily. If you are able to bring yourself through the process of calcination and in turn the black phase of alchemy you will be find a place of peace and rest that you could never have expected before. No matter how hot the fire used, the gold never regrets it’s perfected state once achieved.

We will bring our look at the process of calcination to a close here so that each of us may be able to think and meditate over the process we have just covered. I am sure that many of us are passing through a calcination process currently or will be one day in our study of alchemy, and I hope that you will be able to hold onto that salt within, the building blocks of who you truly are, in order bring yourself through the fire. I look forward to covering the process of dissolution with you next week and I hope this next week finds you well.

References:

[1] Albertus, Frater. The Alchemists Handbook: Manual for Practical Laboratory Alchemy. Weiser Books, 1987.

[2] Anawati, Georges C. "Arabic alchemy." In Encyclopedia of the history of Arabic science, pp. 807-839. Routledge, 2019.

[3] Bartlett, Robert Allen. Real alchemy: A primer of practical alchemy. Nicolas-Hays, Inc., 2009.

[4] Haschmi, Mohamed Yahia. "The beginning of Arab alchemy." Ambix 9, no. 3 (1961): 155- 161.

[5] Hauck, Dennis William. The complete idiot's guide to alchemy. Penguin, 2008.

[6] Holmyard, Eric John. Alchemy. Courier Corporation, 1990.

[7] Johnson, Obed Simon. A study of Chinese alchemy. Martino Publishing, 2009.

[8] Jung, Carl Gustav. Jung on alchemy. Princeton University Press, 1995.

[9] Moureau, Sébastien, and Nicolas Thomas. "Practice and Experiment: Alchemical Operations in the Middle Ages." A Cultural History of Chemistry: The Middle Ages, eds. Charles Burnett and Sébastien Moureau (London: Bloomsbury, 2022) (2022): 35-47.

[10] Principe, Lawrence M. The secrets of alchemy. University of Chicago Press, 2012.

[11] Rubenstein, Elias. Alchemy-Secrets of Consciousness Transformation. XinXii, 2024.

[12] Tony, Alchemist. Alchemy for Beginners: Discover the Magic and Mystery of the Ancient Alchemy Craft and Use it to Your Advantage. Independently published, 2019.

[13] White, David Gordon. The alchemical body: Siddha traditions in medieval India. University of Chicago Press, 2